Yesterday
Yesterday was a big full day. In the morning we drove down to Paoli for the farmers market, but arrived too late and it was over (not because it was scheduled to be over, but because the farmers had sold everything and gone home). However, instead we stopped in at the local grocery store down there, which had quite a remarkable array of locally produced products. We picked up some aged Gouda and fresh strawberries.
After lunch, it was still relatively not blazing hot outside (like 78) so we got on our bikes and went for ride toward down town. We ended up on a truly wonderful rails to trails path headed straight for down town. This was suburban/urban biking at it's best. This is what a city would be like in a cyclist's utopia. The trail was well paved and wide enough to easily accommodate 3 cyclists across. There was shade and were proper street signs every time we came to a road. The path was extremely level and straight (as you'd expect from a former train route), and in many cases we went over or under the automobile roads. In neighborhoods of cult-i-sacs and dead-ends, there were bike trails connecting the roads to the bike path, again with proper road signs so you knew where you were. There were tons of people out using the path, for both recreation and transportation if I don't miss my guess. As we got closer into town, we started passing condo buildings with extensive and overflowing bike parking outside. What an incredible place to live that must be... urban living at it's finest... but unfortunately rather far from work for Josh and I.
As we came into town we also started running parallel to train tracks that are still in service, and apparently carry coal to the power stations near the University. We stopped at the old train station that has been converted to a bike shop and purchased some bungie cords as my backpack which we had strapped onto the back of my bike (with non-elastic strapping) kept falling off. We bought a couple normal bungie cords, and also an ingenious little cargo net which is a rather brilliant piece of engineering.
Right around the one-time train station the tracks start veering away from the city again. We took a branch of the trail that veered around Monona Bay and enjoyed seeing the ducks and water mammals of some sort that were up on the shore, then took some surface streets and eventually met up with a portion of the trail running along John Nolen Drive and took that across the entrance to Monona Bay and back toward the city. John Nolen Drive then runs parallel to Lake Monona, but slightly inland with fancy convention buildings right along the lake... well, it turns out the path is even closer to the lake than the buildings, so we got to follow the lake front into town. It was beautiful, but smelly. Lake Monona isn't as clean as one might hope.
Eventually we arrived at our destination, the St. Vincent de Paul downtown, only to discover that evidently one of the times my backpack fell off the bike, the bike lock key for the spare lock (which lives in the lock as we only have the one key) had sheared off, leaving half of itself in the lock. We ended up turning around and retracing our steps a mile or so to the bike shop that looks like a castle and purchased another lock (our primary locks live at work, since that's where we normally lock our bikes). Then we returned to St. Vincent de Paul for a little shopping. As I'd anticipated, I was able to find a copy of "The Mists of Avalon" in their extensive used books section, and we also bought some clothes. When the store closed, we stopped in at a nearby Thai restaurant we'd passed between the St. Vincent de Paul and the bike shop for a well-earned dinner. We were briefly distracted by some folk musicians in the park across the way, but I was concerned about getting dinner in time to catch a useful bus homeward (we were exhausted by this point), so we didn't listen long. The food was okay, but not excellent (aside from the crab rangoon which were excellent)... kind of like most of the Thai food we've gotten in Madison.
After dinner we walked two blocks to a bus stop for the #7, which took us to the West Transfer Point, and then became the #51 which took us to within spitting distance of Verona, but still around 3 miles from home. On that last leg home, we noticed some model airplanes flying in a park nearby.
All in all, it was an absolutely lovely day, though ~20 miles of biking tired me out more than I think it should have... but that's all the more reason for having done it.
After lunch, it was still relatively not blazing hot outside (like 78) so we got on our bikes and went for ride toward down town. We ended up on a truly wonderful rails to trails path headed straight for down town. This was suburban/urban biking at it's best. This is what a city would be like in a cyclist's utopia. The trail was well paved and wide enough to easily accommodate 3 cyclists across. There was shade and were proper street signs every time we came to a road. The path was extremely level and straight (as you'd expect from a former train route), and in many cases we went over or under the automobile roads. In neighborhoods of cult-i-sacs and dead-ends, there were bike trails connecting the roads to the bike path, again with proper road signs so you knew where you were. There were tons of people out using the path, for both recreation and transportation if I don't miss my guess. As we got closer into town, we started passing condo buildings with extensive and overflowing bike parking outside. What an incredible place to live that must be... urban living at it's finest... but unfortunately rather far from work for Josh and I.
As we came into town we also started running parallel to train tracks that are still in service, and apparently carry coal to the power stations near the University. We stopped at the old train station that has been converted to a bike shop and purchased some bungie cords as my backpack which we had strapped onto the back of my bike (with non-elastic strapping) kept falling off. We bought a couple normal bungie cords, and also an ingenious little cargo net which is a rather brilliant piece of engineering.
Right around the one-time train station the tracks start veering away from the city again. We took a branch of the trail that veered around Monona Bay and enjoyed seeing the ducks and water mammals of some sort that were up on the shore, then took some surface streets and eventually met up with a portion of the trail running along John Nolen Drive and took that across the entrance to Monona Bay and back toward the city. John Nolen Drive then runs parallel to Lake Monona, but slightly inland with fancy convention buildings right along the lake... well, it turns out the path is even closer to the lake than the buildings, so we got to follow the lake front into town. It was beautiful, but smelly. Lake Monona isn't as clean as one might hope.
Eventually we arrived at our destination, the St. Vincent de Paul downtown, only to discover that evidently one of the times my backpack fell off the bike, the bike lock key for the spare lock (which lives in the lock as we only have the one key) had sheared off, leaving half of itself in the lock. We ended up turning around and retracing our steps a mile or so to the bike shop that looks like a castle and purchased another lock (our primary locks live at work, since that's where we normally lock our bikes). Then we returned to St. Vincent de Paul for a little shopping. As I'd anticipated, I was able to find a copy of "The Mists of Avalon" in their extensive used books section, and we also bought some clothes. When the store closed, we stopped in at a nearby Thai restaurant we'd passed between the St. Vincent de Paul and the bike shop for a well-earned dinner. We were briefly distracted by some folk musicians in the park across the way, but I was concerned about getting dinner in time to catch a useful bus homeward (we were exhausted by this point), so we didn't listen long. The food was okay, but not excellent (aside from the crab rangoon which were excellent)... kind of like most of the Thai food we've gotten in Madison.
After dinner we walked two blocks to a bus stop for the #7, which took us to the West Transfer Point, and then became the #51 which took us to within spitting distance of Verona, but still around 3 miles from home. On that last leg home, we noticed some model airplanes flying in a park nearby.
All in all, it was an absolutely lovely day, though ~20 miles of biking tired me out more than I think it should have... but that's all the more reason for having done it.